What Your Edmonds Chiropractor Wants You to Know About Whiplash Injuries

At Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage, our goal is to help our patients to get back on track after an accident or disease leads to pain or limited mobility. Often, patients don’t recognize just how severe or debilitating their injuries can be. This is common, for example, in whiplash. If you’ve been told you have whiplash or you have symptoms of it, it’s important for you to seek out care from your trusted Edmonds chiropractor in our office.

What Is Whiplash?

Whiplash is a type of neck injury. It occurs due to the rapid back-and-forth movement of the head or neck. When whiplash occurs, it creates a significant amount of strain on the muscles and joints in the neck. This can be very painful when it occurs, but some people don’t experience much pain until several days later. However, if you have whiplash, or you feel that you may have it due to having significant pain, it’s always best to seek out the care from a chiropractor.

How Does Whiplash Happen?

One way to describe how whiplash occurs is to think of it as the cracking of a whip. In that fluid, back-and-forth movement, the bones in the neck are pulled and lurched. This commonly causes dysfunction and inflammation in the neck. So, when does this occur?

Whiplash occurs for a variety of reasons. It can happen any time the head is moved forcefully back and forth in a rapid motion. The most common times when it occurs are:

• In car accidents, especially in rear-end collisions

• In contact sports, such as football tackles when the collisions occur on the upper body or head

• In instances of assault or physical abuse, especially when someone is shaken or punched in the head or upper body

What Happens During an Injury?

When a forceful impact like this occurs, it causes the head to move back and forth quickly. When this happens, the joints in the neck, called the cervical vertebrae, move back and forth rapidly. In doing so, this causes pressure and damage to the joints as well as the tendons and ligaments located in this area. They are stretched and pulled out of shape. On top of this, it is very common for the cervical spinal column to become misaligned.

When a misalignment of the spinal column occurs, this means the bones do not align properly. This creates a pinching of the nerves and can cause compression of the spinal column discs, the areas of fluid-filled discs that sit between each of the vertebrae. That pinching creates a great deal of pain.

What Whiplash Injury Causes

When you sustain a whiplash injury, it can cause the misalignment of the spinal column. It can also create significant inflammation in the nerves leading from the spinal column. This creates pain and muscle strain. Some of this can resolve on its own. However, without treatment of the actual misalignment, the pain and limited mobility will continue to remain present. That’s why it is so important to seek out help if you have neck pain, limited movement, or any type of other symptoms of whiplash.

Schedule a Consultation for Whiplash with Your Edmonds Chiropractor

The best place to learn more about your whiplash injury is with your Edmonds chiropractor at Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage. Come in for a consultation and examination with your chiropractor to learn about your risks. Call: 425-361-1839.